Long Beach Unified special education teachers and parents say they’re scrambling in response to staffing changes that have shuffled classroom aides who provide critical support to students with disabilities.
Last month, Jacqueline Santos, a special education teacher at James Madison Elementary, learned that one of her aides had been reassigned, leaving her with reduced support in a classroom of students who sometimes self-injure or run away and need help with communication, toileting, staying on task and regulating emotions. Santos began “putting out fires,” she said, pulling in another aide to fill the gap and causing a “ripple effect,” throughout the school, which lost three special education aides that month, Santos said, which the district confirmed.
She wrote a letter to the district pleading for more support for her classroom. A district administrator responded, acknowledging that mid-year moves are never easy: “We were overstaffed as a district, and we had to let several agency people go to remain fiscally responsible across the district,” the letter said, according to Santos, who read an excerpt to the Long Beach Post…